Here’s my ten best-political-movies-ever-made list (thirteen, actually, but I really did try). And let’s face it, any best list for this category that does not include a film by Costa-Gavras is seriously lacking in political awareness or the politics of movie making itself. Hamlet (1996) by Kenneth Branagh and Throne of Blood (1957) by Akira Kurosawa were also very tempting, but then I’d be pushing fifteen and well on my way to a hundred... and time is certainly not on my side at this time of the year.

1. Z (1969) by Costa-Gavras 2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) by Stanley Kubrick. 3. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) by John Frankenheimer 4. The Battle of Chile (1978, documentary) by Patricio Guzmán 5. The Hour of the Furnaces (1968, documentary) by Octavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanas 6. October: Ten Days that Shook the World (1928) by Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein 7. Reds (1981) by Warren Beatty 8. 1984 (1984) by Michael Radford 9. Triumph of the Will (1935, documentary) by Leni Riefenstahl 10. Birth of a Nation (1915) by D. W. Griffith 11. Our Daily Bread (1934) by King Vidor 12. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) by Don Siegel 13. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) by John Ford